Three months down, two to go. Five months with no holidays is a long stretch of time. I'm feeling a bit more equipped to deal with the prospect, though, since I got a nice fat pay check from Seien last week. I've decided that the best way to cope with summer (especially August, when everyone else is on holidays and my communication with them will be limited to sending them screenshots of the weather forecast and all capping WHY HAVE YOU ABANDONED ME??) is to relax the budget a bit and allow for things like massages and pedicures and the occasional bamboo-woven clothing shopping spree. Also beer.

The weather has not been too terrible yet, which is nice. I still haven't turned my AC on (although we've been using it at work since May) and the nights are still cool enough to sleep comfortably. I'm still riding my bike to Seien rather than taking the bus, although that is largely because taking the bus involves leaving home well before 8 am and then stressing about traffic and not so much because it is still comfortable cycling weather. Add to that the fact that I get paid for the bus fare regardless of how I commute and the bicycle sounds pretty good.

You'd think I would have my week off in September all planned out already but no. I did find a really nice place on an island in Indonesia that sounded perfect but I would have only been able to spend 4.5 days out of a 9 day holiday there, with the rest of the time being devoted to transit, and that didn't sound like a good ratio to me.

The juhachi kippu will be in effect during that week. I used it last winter and it was pretty nice to get to travel a lot for such a cheap price. So that's a possibility, perhaps slowly working my way down Japan and then catching a cheap flight back to Nagoya.

The other option is to check into the Hilton in Kuala Lumpur for five days or so. Random, I know, but pretty cheap for a week in a five star hotel. What would I do? Well, there is a pool to lounge by, and day trips to take, and some excellent shopping and food and maybe a bit of pampering thrown in.

It's kind of hard to choose, really.